President Obama Saved My Turkey's Life and Then We All Went to Disneyland

On the public interest scale, the President's Thanksgiving turkey pardon sits somewhere above his March Madness bracket but way below his Easter egg roll. Trampled by Thanksgiving week's high-stakes football, spectacular parades, and door-buster sales, the formal, 15-minute tradition feels a little paltry. Too much formality, not enough confetti.

People just don't care too much about the Presidential turkey pardon, but they should. Because it can tell you something about the state of the country. That's what we found out when we caught up with Graye Pelletier Todd, whose family brought President Obama the turkey he during his first year in office.

Here, she tells ELLE.com all about it, from the preparation process and the day-of events to the have-to-hear-it-to-believe-it V.I.P. treatment: the motorcades, first class flights, luxury hotel rooms—for not just her family but the turkeys, too—that mark a bygone, pre-recession era.

Courtesy of Pelletier Family

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Photo: Courtesy of Pelletier Family

"In 2009, just as Barack Obama was sworn into office as President of the United States, my dad, Walter Pelletier, took up the one-year stint as Chairman of the National Turkey Federation. This meant our worlds were about to collide, because tradition calls for the Chairman to bring President the pardoned turkey [since href='http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/politicsnow/la-pn-presidential-turkey-pardon-history-20131127,0,5565486.story#axzz2lxnexLI2' target='_blank">the it started in 1989. We knew as soon as my dad was appointed that my whole family would get to go to D.C. for the event in November, and we were all pretty excited.

What people might not realize is that preparation for the turkey pardon starts way, way earlier than November—six, eight months in advance. That\'s when my dad had one of his growers start cordoning off about a hundred turkeys to be considered for the pardon. It takes a lot of work and a lot of turkeys. They\'re bred for the pardon, so they\'re larger than most turkeys, and they don\'t have the longest life spans. You also have to really work with them, training them to be around people, because they\'re not the smartest or friendliest animals.

We narrowed down the pool of turkeys every couple weeks until finally we settled on two turkeys, Courage and Carolina. The second one serves as an alternate in case the other doesn\'t live until the pardon, but ultimately, they both go up to D.C. and they both go live at the special Presidential-pardoned-turkey place afterwards, even if only one (in this case, Courage) gets officially pardoned.

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Photo: Courtesy of Pelletier Family

The night before the pardon, we were flown up to D.C. and checked into The Willard, the historic luxury hotel across the street from the White House [where href='http://www.ihg.com/intercontinental/hotels/gb/en/washington/washa/hoteldetail?qCiD=27&qCiMy=102013&qCoD=28&qCoMy=102013&qHtlC=WASHA&qAdlt=1&qChld=0&qRms=1&qPSt=0&qRtP=6CBARC&qSmP=3&qRmP=3&qWch=0&qSHp=1&qBrs=ic.cp.in.vn.hi.ex.rs.cv.sb.cw.6c&qSrt=BRAND_SORT&qRpp=25&qRRSrt=rt&qLat=0&qLng=0&srb_u=1&storeRecentSearch=true' target='_blank">the rooms start at $200. It was very cushy—for us and the turkeys (they hard their own room, and as you can see in the above photo, they loved it).

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The day of the pardon we went over for a tour of the White House, and then went into the event space about an hour early to prep. The President was there but not the first lady, which we were a little bummed about! Malia and Sasha joined their father soon after—and they seemed totally caught off guard by what was going on. When the President asked them "Girls, you want to come help me pardon the turkey?" they were so shy about it. It was adorable.

Photo: Courtesy of Pelletier Family

The President, on the other hand, was really charismatic, of course. "Y'all must know a thing or two about fashion," he said when he shook our hands and looked at our outfits. He made a joke about how Michelle keeps him on top of that stuff, and we giggled politely, but of course we'd started planning our outfits two months in advance. My mom had something custom-made for her, and I wore black Balenciaga boots and a gray 3.1 Phillip Lim coat that felt conservative but still pretty.

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Courage's pardon was over pretty quickly, but our journey didn't end there. We had to take the turkeys to their final destination, and from 2005 to 2009, that was Disneyland. They sent us there in style: We had a sirens-blazing, full-on motorcade to the airport, and then hopped on a plane to Los Angeles where the entire first class cabin was just ourselves and the turkeys. They called the plane Turkey One. Naturally.

Courtesy of Pelletier Family

Photo: Courtesy of Pelletier Family

We spent the next day at Disneyland, where we rode in a Thanksgiving parade with the turkeys, before settling them into their new home at the theme park. That was the last year that the pardoned turkeys and the Chairman's family got that treatment—now the turkeys just go to a quiet farm in Virginia. No sponsored first class flight or parade or anything. Getting corporate sponsors to back these sorts of things came easy back then, but now, it's a little different." —Graye Pelletier Todd, as told to Natalie Matthews

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